Notwithstanding this a.s.sertion about the safety of century-serving keepers, Bart would sometimes steal out in the dark and climb the bare, lonely hill. Then he would search the black horizon.

"There's the reg'lar light," he would say, "but I don't see anything more. All right!"

XV.

_THE STORM GATHERING._

There was a tongue of land not far from the lighthouse known as "Pudding Point." How long the water-trip to it might be depended upon the state of the tide. In the immediate vicinity of the lighthouse there was, in the direction of this Pudding Point, such an acc.u.mulation of sandy ridges that at low-water the voyage was only a quarter of a mile. At high tide all the yellow flats were covered, and an oarsman must pull his boat across half-a-mile of water to go from the light to the point.

Sometimes Dave had occasion to visit Pudding Point. A few houses were there, and they might be able to supply an article needed at the light, and that would save a trip to Shipton. One sunny morning Dave had rowed over from the light, and was drawing his boat up the sands, when he noticed a familiar figure striding along a ridge beyond the beach. It was a person of handsome carriage, and one well aware of it.

"I should know that form anywhere," said Dave. "Hollo, d.i.c.k!" he shouted.

d.i.c.k Pray came running down a sandy slope and gave Dave his hand.

"I am trying to hunt up Thomas Trafton," said Dave. "I believe he has a fish-house around here, hasn't he?"

"You'll find him on that ledge a little way back."

Dave hunted up the fish-house--a black, weather-beaten box. Thomas Trafton was spreading fish on the long fish-flakes in the rear of his humble quarters.

"That you, Dave?" asked the fisherman. "I thought I saw you down on the sh.o.r.e a half-hour ago."

"I was over at the light half-an-hour ago."

"Then it was Timothy Waters."

"How so?"

"Don't you know that if one takes a back view of you and Timothy, although he is really older than you by half-a-dozen years, it wouldn't be easy to tell you apart? Let me see. You are twenty-one?"

"So they say at home."

"Timothy is twenty-seven at least.'

"And I look like Timothy?"

"Rear view only, and I can only tell it is him if in walking he throws his arms out. You never do that."

"I am not anxious to resemble Timothy Waters. I thought he was at sea."

"Off and on. He is now, I suppose, in that craft off in the stream."

"The _Relentless_?"

"That's the one. I know I am glad to be out of her. My health improved steadily after quitting her. I am going to be at home, fishing, this season."

"How do they all do at home?"

"Oh, comfortable."

"Bart is getting to be a big boy, isn't he?"

"Yes, he is. He thinks a good deal of you. Now, you know that habit he got into once--"

"What was that?"

"Of taking my spy-gla.s.s and going out to look at the lighthouse at night--"

"To see if I had hung out a lantern because we were disabled--by sickness, you know, or something of the kind?"

"That is it. Well, his granny says he hasn't wholly dropped it now.

She will see him go out, and when he comes back she will say, 'Anything?' 'Nothing,' he will say."

"Oh, I guess there never will be any need of his looking."

"No, I s'pose not; but it shows his interest."

"Yes; I am thankful for that.--Well, let us have a fish to broil; have come out for that."

Dave received his fish, paid for it, and very soon turned away, striding off energetically in the direction of his boat.

When Dave returned to the lighthouse, the tide, gradually dropping, had uncovered the rocky foundations, and the water was playing with the fringes of seaweed all about the rocks.

"How gracefully that seaweed rises and falls! Those curves of its motion are very delicate.--Hollo! what is that?" he asked.

Looking at the foundations, he saw in a crevice a little object that was not a lump of rock-weed or a rock, and what was it?

"A pocket-book!" said Dave, leaning out of his boat and picking up this relic tightly wedged between the stones. "I'll look at that when I get up into the kitchen."

Reaching the kitchen, he hastily opened the pocket-book, noticed that it was empty, and then placed it to dry on a shelf. It was very peaceful in the kitchen, and the stove purred and the clock ticked contentedly and quietly as ever. But where was the light-keeper? his a.s.sistant wondered.

"Upstairs probably," was the thought in reply; and yet this consideration, reasonable as it might seem at the moment, did not dispose of the question wholly. True, in a lighthouse, where one might say if a man were not downstairs he must be upstairs, that he could not be "out in the yard" or "in the cellar," Dave's conclusion seemed to be correct. He felt, however, a peculiar sense of loneliness. If Dave were a person given to moods, if he were likely to be sombre, he might have said it was only a fancy; but for one of his temperament that was unusual. Dave with reason had been somewhat worried about his princ.i.p.al. Toby Tolman was growing old. It had been in certain quarters openly said that he was too old for his position. He had been such an efficient keeper, and he had as his a.s.sistant a man so valuable, that no one cared to make an effort to remove him from his position.

The person who would probably be benefited by any change, and would be invited to take charge of the light, was David Fletcher, and he would not move, for that reason, against his kind old friend. Dave had worked all the harder to fill up any deficiencies on the part of his princ.i.p.al, and the princ.i.p.al would doubtless have been invited to step out if his a.s.sistant had not worked so hard to keep him in. Often Dave noticed an indisposition in the light-keeper to attend to that fraction of the duties of the place falling to him, and Dave rightly attributed the indisposition to inability. During the watch-hours belonging to the keeper his a.s.sistant had sometimes found him asleep, and when the rest-hours belonging to the keeper arrived, he would unduly prolong his sleep in the morning, and neglect duties to which he had hitherto given prompt attention. Dave also noticed that Mr. Tolman lingered at an unusual length over his Bible. It would be an exceedingly good sign if it could be said of many people that they spent twice as much time as previously with their Bibles; but when a man usually giving to this habit an hour and a half may take three hours, neglecting other daily duties, there may be occasion for inquiry into the change. The light-keeper did not himself notice this peculiarity about to be mentioned, and yet any one seeing the pa.s.sages read would have appreciated it. The keeper now found unusual comfort in the psalms that spoke of G.o.d as a hiding-place, a refuge, a high tower. Was he like the mariner who sees the storm pressing him closely and hastens to find the harbour where he can let fall each straining sail, like the tired bird that drops its wings because it has found its nest?

Dave had other reason for worry. There were in circulation mysterious stories that everything in the administration of the lighthouse at Black Rocks was not satisfactory. There were sly whisperings that goods belonging to Government were given out to others by the keepers, but when, where, and why, n.o.body said. There was only the repeated story of a mysterious disappearance of Government property. Several friends of Dave tried to catch and hold these rumours. Catch them they did, but hold them they could not. They were like birds that you may think are yours, but when you turn them into a room, lo, they fly out of an open window in the opposite direction.

Thomas Trafton was very indignant.

"Look here!" he said with a reddened face to a fisherman repeating some of these charges, "who told you that?"

"Almost everybody."

"Name one."